I walked into my favorite little bookstore yesterday (in Mystic, Conn.), and instantly got that old familiar feeling. That “kid-in-a-candy store” feeling. That “Christmas morning” feeling. The tingly anticipation of treasure to be discovered.

It’s the same feeling I got when I was a kid and my mother would take me to the toy store. Back then, Toys R Us and the other mega- toy stores didn’t exist. (Yes, it was the Stone Ages.) The toy store was small—nothing like today’s glittering palaces—but walking through its doors was a thrill. Oddly, I don’t remember any particular toy that my mother bought me there; I only remember the one she didn’t buy me. It was a huge stuffed animal, a golden brown dog the size of a pony—or so it seemed to me. It was perched high on a shelf above the cash register, where no little fingers could pat its wonderful head or pull its floppy ears. No little arms could wrap around its neck, no sticky little faces could bury themselves in its fake fur. I begged and whined and pointed, ever hopeful. My mother inquired about the price, but it was unthinkably expensive. Out of reach, the big soft dog remained pristine and unbought.

Then one day it wasn’t there. Such an eventuality had never occurred to me. That dog was mine just as surely as if it was sitting on my bed. Surely my mother was secretly saving up to buy it for me. Maybe… yes, of course… she had bought it to surprise me on my birthday or Christmas or whatever holiday was coming up. That was the only feasible explanation.

I was wrong, of course. My mother did not buy the dog, and the toy store never got another one. The lessons of childhood are hard. They need to be, I guess, to toughen us up for life. Perhaps if she had bought me that dog, I wouldn’t even remember it today. Who knows? Anyway, the toy store gradually lost its charm and more grown-up destinations took its place in my heart. A jewelry store full of handmade silver bangles and baubles. A record store. A dark shop down an alley, fragrant with incense, that carried hippie dresses, crudely crafted clay pottery, and leather belts and sandals.

These days, it’s a bookstore that gives me that old thrill. (Preferably a small independent bookstore.) All those stories hiding between beautiful bindings, all that beautiful writing under the dustcovers. (Yes, a library gives me the same feeling, but sometimes I want a book all to myself, with no due date.) Which one to choose? Yesterday, as I carried Bob Dylan’s tempting autobiography around the store (Chronicles, Vol. 1), I changed my mind at last minute and bought City of Falling Angels by John Berendt. It’s a true story about a fire in Venice, the famous city of canals in Italy. I read Berendt’s first book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, (about a real-life murder in Savannah, Georgia) when it came out ten years ago, and loved it. I’m savoring the feel of the new book in my hands. I don’t want to rush through it. After all, it might take Berendt another ten years to write his next book!

What kind of place gives you that toy store feeling? I’m not talking about “shop-till-you-drop” materialism. I’m talking about a sparkling sense of possibility. The promise that perhaps, today, in this sacred place, you will discover a little something that will change your life.